Kill Them With Kindness

Another post in a series on Famous Family Sayings

One of the ways Mom and Dad tried to help us get along was by the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” In a family of nine, that was definitely a great way to live because we really couldn’t be fighting all the time. Oh, the noise! So we did the best we could and tried to get along. However, kids will be kids. We did stupid things, we said stupid things and sometimes we even got in fights. If the Silver Rule was to “Turn the other cheek”, then the Bronze Rule, though somewhat lesser known, was “Kill them with kindness.” If someone was bothering you, or giving you a hard time, or heaven forbid wanted to fight, we were told to “Kill them with kindness.”

I can remember plenty of times when we were playing street hockey, football, wiffle ball, or any of the other assorted games we played in our neighborhood, there was an argument. In the heat of the battle, the following kinds of things were screamed at the top of someone’s lungs: It never went in, it hit the post! You were out of bounds when you caught it! I didn’t swing and miss, I just barely ticked it! I called time because a car was coming! We certainly weren’t following the Bronze Rule in our middle of the street clashes, but most of the time somebody gave in or gave up, and the game went on. However, there were times that someone had had too much of somebody cheating or whining and they almost came to blows. They wanted to kill each other with something but it wasn’t kindness.

It happened to me once. One guy who participated in our epic competitions was a year older than me and about six inches taller than me, and he always had to get his way. Now that I think of it, he was taller than everybody that played in those games. Anyway, if he was losing, you knew he was going to pull something out of nowhere to try and gain the advantage. If you took the ball away in street hockey, you slashed him. If you scored a touchdown, you were offside. One day toward the end of a football game I went out for a pass, he pushed me down from behind before the ball even got there, and then triumphantly yelled, “Incomplete!” Having had enough of his bogus penalties and cheating all day, I jumped up, pushed him back and screamed “Interference!” in his face (of course, my calling of penalties was always justified).

After a couple of more pushes back and forth and some more yelling, our fists were suddenly up in the air and we were ready to rumble. Instead of “Killing him with kindness” I had some other things on my mind that may have worked:

• A punch of encouragement to the gut. Though not as strong as “Killing him with kindness”, a well-placed punch to the midsection could be just what the doctor ordered – for the one doing the punching, not the one receiving.
• A heart felt body slam to the ground. Nothing says “You’re a good friend” better than that. Probably not the best option though, seeing as he was about six inches taller than me.
• A choke hold of good cheer. If I couldn’t “Kill him with kindness” maybe I could have just made him lose consciousness for a minute. That would have cheered me up.
• A karate chop of compassion to the solar plexus. I should have thought about how hard it must have been to have to cheat and lie in order to always win. Knocking the wind out of him may have helped me have a little more compassion. 

Well, none of that happened. Not one punch was thrown because the two of us waited for the other to throw the first punch, which never came. What did come was his older sister, who pushed us apart, gave us a talking to, and then dragged him home, yelling at him the whole way. After that day we were all way more afraid of her than him.

If I had followed the “Kill them with kindness” rule, I probably would have gotten in a lot less trouble, because there was often someone around that bothered me or gave me a hard time –  brothers and sisters included! On the flip side, with all those people I would have been killing with kindness, that would have also made me a mass murderer. 

Paraprosdokians

A friend of mine at work, whose sense of humor is very similar to mine, sent me an email last week with the title, Paraprosdokian. I had no clue what that meant, but was in need of a bit of humor (as usual at work) so I read it. The email started with the definition of paraprosdokian: "Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." For example, “Where there's a will, I want to be in it.”

Well, I guess my brain is wired for paraprosdokians, because there are a lot of times that somebody says something or does something, or situations occur, that make me think of things like these. Thankfully, I don’t have Tourette’s Syndrome, so I don’t just blurt them out, but there are times I need to bite my tongue and stifle a laugh. There have been many times that I could have messed up my life more than it is by simply saying a few words, a paraprosdokian. 

Here are some of my favorites from the email:

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

Maybe this is why my parents always told us to walk away from a fight if at all possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen intelligent people end up looking like a fool because they were goaded into temporary insanity by a master button pusher. Or a younger brother.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

Well, at least it’s the “last thing” they want to do, but you definitely need to be open-minded and keep all options on the table. Just the threat of being hurt, maybe by an older brother, can keep you in line sometimes. You know the famous quote, “The only thing we need to fear, is fear itself”? Well, I can tell you from experience that you need to fear an older brother that you just goaded into an argument and who was then punished.

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

Contrary to popular belief today, there is right and wrong. We are all wrong at one time or another– all of us. My parents taught me to stand up for what I believed and to not just go along with what someone else said, thought, or did. There are just times I cannot agree with something, especially if that would be the “politically correct” thing to do. Funny, though, that my older brothers thought our parents’ teaching in regard to not just going along with something should be suspended where they were involved. 

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

How true. Watch little kids; they say and do whatever in public. Have an itch in a place that shouldn’t be scratched in public? No problem for a kid. Is that little booger just barely hanging on to your nose bugging you? They just pick it out…and then eat it. We, as adults, do some things, too, but first we make sure no one is looking. Or we make sure that we have enough time to escape without being identified after we pass some gas.

I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

Back in the days when I was young and ambitious, I wanted to be the big guy. I wanted to be a leader, to manage people and processes, to be one of the few that the many looked to for direction, guidance and information. However, two things happened that changed my mind; I had kids and I actually became a manager. The kids helped me realize that my job was not as important as I thought it was. In the grand scheme of things it meant very little, especially compared to how much they loved me. Becoming a manager, and the extra hours at work that came with it, just reinforced that realization. Just give me a regular paycheck with enough money to take care of my family.

I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

Some people are fault-finders. They need to figure out whose fault it was that something did or did not happen. It can be a long, laborious process that can make you half crazy, trying to tie events together to make your case. I prefer to simply blame someone else. There’s no research, no investigation, no logical thinking. Blame-shifters live happier, less complicated lives than fault-finders.

A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

We didn’t get away with much in my house. Somehow my parents usually knew when we were up to something. If we did happen to pull off a caper, they found out about it later. They could probably tell just by looking at us – we had the face of a guilty conscience. However, these days I realize that a fuzzy memory has nothing to do with my conscience and everything to do with getting older and the associated senior moments.

I love surprises, unexpected endings and humor – all the ingredients of a paraprosdokian. Life would just be too boring without them. Something small, like a humorous email at work, can change my day. A little laughter to break up the monotony is always welcome in my view. Besides, why do now what you can put off ‘til later?

Football

Football is back! The games are on television and I’ve seen quite a few people either playing football or just tossing a football around. Around here, this time of the year is perfect for being outside and doing something. It’s not too hot and it’s not too cold. You can work up a bit of a sweat, but not have your shirt soaked through. If you’re not much of a doer, there’s nothing like watching football on a Sunday afternoon, hanging out with friends or family and eating some good food.

Football was big in my neighborhood growing up. When we only had a few guys we played out in the street, two-hand touch, from telephone pole to telephone pole, and the defense had to count to 5-Mississippi before they could rush the quarterback. You would think that counting to 5-Mississippi would be simple, but not much was with those guys. There were the guys who made up their own language when they counted (1missippi2missippi3missippi4missippi5missippi). I still haven’t found Missippi on a map. There were guys who rushed the quarterback when they got to the five in 5-Mississippi instead of after saying the full Mississippi. There were the guys who counted silently when you were supposed to count out loud, yelled “5-MISSISSIPPI!” after about 2.5 seconds and then rushed the quarterback.

Sometimes we made up first down markers, like you had to get past the tree in the front yard of our house or past the front walkway of the neighbor’s house across the street. Once you got past that mark, we chose another. Or sometimes we played that if you completed a pass, the down stayed the same. You could theoretically drive the length of the field, going 2 feet at a time, all the while being on first down. The shorter the pass, the better chance of actually catching it, so sometimes people would try to sneak in a pass that was behind the line of scrimmage, but the rule was that the receiver had to be over it to be considered a complete pass.

Of course there were always the arguments over whether the guy got you with one hand or two. There were some kids who would swear on their mother’s grave that you didn’t tag them with both hands and sometimes it just wasn’t worth the argument. But just to make sure they didn’t do it again, they just might get tagged a little extra roughly the next time he caught the ball. There were some kids who would lie or cheat in order to win so there were always arguments, ranging from the 5-Mississippi rule, to whether a pass was complete or not, to whether you tagged them with both hands. Amazingly, I don’t remember any games breaking out into actual fights. You argued your side, made your point and then we moved on for the good of the game.

When we had a larger number of kids to play, we went to a field at the beginning of the cemetery at the end of our street and played tackle football. No, we didn’t play amongst the graves. The front part of the cemetery was actually very nice. It had the field we played football on, some nice trees, a couple of ponds we played hockey on in the winter and people fished in during the other months, and a small hill that kids went sledding on in the winter. The graves started beyond the ponds and never bothered any of us – except at night, when we weren’t supposed to be in the cemetery at all. So we’d have our big game and we all got dirty, some of us got slightly hurt and a few of us lost our shirts. I remember a few of my friends going home and getting yelled at for the condition of their clothes and themselves, but hey, this is football, not badminton!

A highlight of the games, whether two-hand touch in the street or tackle in the cemetery, was after playing for a few hours we’d pool our money, go to the Sunoco station and buy sodas for everybody. If we had enough money, we shared some candy bars, too. Isn’t it funny how you could be beating each other up, getting into heated arguments and swearing you would never play with that kid again, and then you’d get a Mountain Dew or a Pepsi and all was forgotten? Now that I think about it, there were times we didn’t have enough money for each of us to have a soda so we shared those, too. Without straws. And none of us died.

If you want to get out of the house this weekend and not have to do yard work, go play some football. A little three-on-three, two-hand touch is great exercise. Us older guys aren’t as quick as we used to be, or as limber, so take it easy on us. But please, don’t be that guy who always says you only got him with one hand. You just may get unexpectedly jacked up!